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Oct. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Scientists in the U.S. moved closer to a cure for AIDS, identifying a way to find drugs that would help rid patients of the hardest-to-reach pockets of HIV that now defy treatment.

Current anti-HIV drugs reduce the virus to undetectable levels without eradicating it. The virus survives by lying dormant in immune-system cells, where the medicines don’t reach them. Scientists from Johns Hopkins University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute reported today that they developed a way of luring out these cells in laboratory experiments, an achievement that they said may lead to a cure if repeated in humans.

In 2007, about 2.7 million people were newly infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and 2 million died of the disease, making it the world’s deadliest infectious malady, according to the Geneva-based World Health Organization, an arm of the United Nations. Scientists looking to stop HIV have turned to attacking so-called latent reservoirs of the virus after efforts to prevent infection, such as vaccines and gels, largely failed.

“This is a way in which you could envision finding a drug that would, in conjunction with existing treatment, allow us to cure patients,” said Robert Siliciano, the professor who led the study at Johns Hopkins’s medical school in Baltimore. More research is needed, he said.

For about 12 years, doctors have known that HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus, can lie dormant in immune-system cells called resting CD4s found in the lymph nodes, spleen and blood. There the virus stops replicating, avoiding the drugs designed to kill it.

Roaring Back

Studies have shown latent HIV comes roaring back when treatment is interrupted, condemning patients to a lifetime on drugs such as Abbott Laboratories’ Kaletra that can cause side effects including nausea, liver damage and fat buildup. Eliminating the last vestiges of the virus could cure patients of the disease, allowing them to stop treatment.

Siliciano’s team mimicked HIV latency in a lab dish using a gene called Bcl-2 to turn normal CD4s into resting cells capable of hosting the dormant form of HIV.

The researchers used the model to test 2,400 chemicals, finding 17 that coaxed the virus out of hiding, kick-starting its normal process of replication. In a human, that would make the virus susceptible to drugs. The best performer was a compound called 5HN found in the leaves, bark and roots of the black walnut tree.

There are few compounds already being studied. For example prostratin;Prostratin is a protein kinase C activator found in the bark of the mamala tree of Samoa, Homalanthus nutans (Euphorbiaceae). While prostratin was originally isolated and identified as a new phorbol from species of the genus Pimelea (Thymelaceae) in Australia, the antiviral activity of prostratin was discovered during research on the traditional knowledge of Samoan healers by ethnobotanist Paul Alan Cox and a team at the U.S. National Cancer Institute. Samoan healers use the mamala tree to treat hepatitis. Research indicated that prostratin has potential to be useful in the treatment of HIV as it could flush viral reservoirs in latently infected CD4+ T-cells.

Now, AIDS Research Alliance has signed an agreement with a major Contract Research Organization to conduct the remaining pharmacokinetic and toxicology studies of prostratin required by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to start testing it in human phase I studies.This year, ARA continues to work collaboratively with researchers across the country to advance this landmark and pioneering line of research. AIDS Research Alliances hopes to complete all of the necessary pre-clinical studies on prostratin by the beginning of 2010, clearing the way for human clinical trials.

If the scientists at AIDS Research Alliance are correct about prostratin, prostratin will revolutionize HIV therapy. Working in combination with HAART therapy, prostratin could be the “one-two” punch we need to eradicate HIV from the body.

•Strategies to eradicate HIV from people living with HIV/AIDS – such as prostratin

Do you have any further information as to the avenues being pursued for metabolic problems specifically lipoatrohy and neuropathy? I know from reading this board that many members suffer from these toxicities.

Thanks for the link.

sensual1973,

It's great to see a glimmer of hope in your post ! Don't worry it might take some time but it will happen.

Part of the reason this research is promising is that it's being conducted by Robert Siciliano at Johns Hopkins. He has an excellent reputation and has been working on HIV for many years, this is someone who knows what he's doing when it comes to HIV research. He's one of the leading authorities on the reservoirs and HIV latency in particular.

It's great to see a glimmer of hope in your post ! Don't worry it might take some time but it will happen.

Heh, looks like our yoplait mate is ready to leave the dark side behind.

Logged

"I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else."

i might be gloomy yes,but on the other hand i see some ridiculous optimism like :"days of hiv are limited or counted ...etc".in general i dont like to keep my hopes high when it comes to hiv atleast in the next decade or so,on the other hand i know that only meds will continue getting better.

Part of the reason this research is promising is that it's being conducted by Robert Siciliano at Johns Hopkins. He has an excellent reputation and has been working on HIV for many years, this is someone who knows what he's doing when it comes to HIV research. He's one of the leading authorities on the reservoirs and HIV latency in particular.

Does this mean the public will directly benefit from the results of this research? If so that is especially exciting.

The big news is the development of the in-vitro latent mode (imo one of the most important discoveries with regards to aids research this past decade) that Siciliano's lab discovered. I believe this was discussed earlier this year at CROI if I am not mistaken. Not sure if it was Siciliano who mentioned it but a speaker said that after having made this discovery it would only be a matter of time before they started finding compounds that would awaken latent virus reservoirs. I am happy to see that it only took months after its announcement that they have already discovered a few compounds. Hope they keep up the work. Nice to see this happen after all the doom and gloom the no-hope-for-a-cure patrol spewed out after the vaccine success announcement a couple weeks back that scientists would give up on finding a cure.

A bit off-target but found these comments of Dr. Luc Montagnier very important and inline with the feelings of many members of the forum:

"Montagnier said AIDS can be eradicated even without a preventive vaccine. Scientists should focus on developing a so- called therapeutic vaccine that doctors would use in conjunction with antiretroviral drugs to rid patients of HIV and keep it from coming back.

“Of course, every initiative which tries to fight AIDS is good in principle,” Montagnier said.

Still, “many millions” of dollars have been spent on preventative vaccines without success, he said. “There should have been more on the cure, more on the treatment, than vaccines.”

This is more fantastic news and the fact that this web site is going post a big write up on it means its a very significant breakthrough. Modern medicine is making immense advances in all fields and i am really optimistic that very soon the breakthrough will come in the fight against hiv even sooner than we think 3to 5 years is my prediction.

When will this happen, i think and hope it will be in my time.i am only six months into meds and i am fed up.i wonder what will happen to me in the next five years still popping this cocktail into my system.i am 35 this year and quote me if they dont come up with something to purge us of this malady, we will all turn to something else.please hurry dear scientists my patience is running out.